In an effort to increase levels of renewable power generation, wind turbine design is driven towards larger generation size, which often results in increasingly longer wind turbine blade length. Accordingly, as such wind turbine blades increase in size, this results in a corresponding increase in the complexity of the blade geometry, with modern wind turbine blades comprising different combinations of blade pre-bends, sweeps, and complex aerodynamic profile curvatures. Such relatively complicated structures introduce different constructional difficulties in the manufacture of components used in wind turbine blade assembly and production.
One such component is the shear web of a wind turbine blade. Shear webs are often provided as an element having an I- or C-shaped cross-section which extends between the internal surfaces of a shell of a wind turbine blade. Shear webs are generally provided as a shear web body, e.g. a sandwich panel construction, which extends between opposed web feet used to bond the shear web to the internal surfaces of the wind turbine blade.
It is known to manufacture such web feet by way of pultrusion. U.S. Pat. No. 5,476,704 describes a method of manufacturing a shear web for a wind turbine rotor, wherein the web foot of the shear web may be manufactured using pultrusion. The height of the shear web may be adjusted by machining or cutting of the web foot.
However, such a process results in considerable material waste, and does not easily allow for implementation in the relatively complex structures of modern wind turbine blades.